Two prominent conservatives just spoke to Cam Edwards of NRANews.com, and myself — former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and David Keene, chairman, American Conservative Union.

DeLay on CPAC: “We have to thank Romney and McCain for helping us with the press angle.”

“Conservatives come out where they see the need. Right now there is a need for conservatives to come out and say what they believe in. We need to come back together. We’ve been in our little silos – social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, security conservatives. We need to come together and work for the conservative cause, and I’m very encouraged about it.”

“We’ve got to start driving some issues. We don’t have to have this government designed by Democrats… Even with McCain, we can get him off this gun show stuff!”

DeLay will be in Scottsdale, Arizona on Tuesday, opening a new chapter of Coalition for Conservative Majority.

A few moments later, Keene had reason to crow – this year’s CPAC had 6,800 attendees, the largest in the 35 years of the conferences. (Last year, they had 6,200 attendees.)

“We hit at the right time… I told Senator McCain and his people he would be well received, and he was. No speaker at CPAC has ever been drowned out by boos.

Keene described McCain’s speech as “pretty good… it didn’t solve his problems overnight. Those problems are long and deep. They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single steps, and she John McCain took that first step. He couldn’t solve all of his problems in a single speech, and he didn’t try. If he had tried, he would have looked silly.”

“McCain’s real problem is one of credibility and trust. He has to establish that credibility, and he needs to create a sense of common mission with conservatives.”

“Every year we see obituaries of the conservative movement, and this year, because McCain has won, everyone’s saying that we don’t matter. Well, this is the first CPAC where we have had a sitting president, a sitting vice president, and every standing presidential candidate of the Republican Party.”(The Democrats are invited, but they somehow, oddly, choose not to attend the Conservative Political Action Commmittee.)

I asked him the hot question here at CPAC: Who should McCain pick as his running mate?

Keene said a nominee usually has three options. If the candidate is okay with both the base and the center, he can pick a running mate that he just plain likes. If the candidate is comfortable with the base of the party, he can pick a running mate that appeals more to the party’s centrists, citing Reagan selecting Bush in 1980. But when a candidate has trouble with the base – and Keene made clear is in this category.

As for a reassuring conservative, “the pool is not that big,” Keene said. The one name that came to his mind instantly was South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. He also suggested that as a senator, McCain would be wise to select a running mate from outside Washington.